THE BETTING FOOL
By a Man Who Should Know Better
Last column of the year, and it finished the way most of them finished: two up, two down, $86.76 at risk and $7.52 of it kept. Pittsburgh and Cleveland played to 13-6, nineteen points, the smallest game I bet all season. Baltimore and Green Bay then hung 65 on a 38.5 with one starting quarterback out and the other doubtful. The bankroll closes at $848.96.
So let's do the year properly, because you sat through it. Thirty wins, thirty-three losses. A thousand dollars in September, $848.96 on Christmas — down 15.1 percent, a worse return than a coffee can. And here's the part I owe you, since I spent seventeen weeks insisting the wind was the whole business: I made 39 unders in ten-mile-an-hour air or better and went 20-19 in them. Fifty-one percent. The ten seasons I built this thing on said fifty-seven. Six points short is less damning than it feels — if the true rate really is 57, then 20 of 39 sits less than one standard deviation off the mark, an ordinary bad year of the kind a real edge throws off on a regular schedule. That's a fact and not an excuse. Facts don't refund anybody, and the $151.04 is gone no matter how defensible the reasoning was.
I'm not going to sell you a comeback. I don't know that the money returns, and anybody who tells you he does is selling something with a subscription attached. What I know is that a decade of games says the market underprices bad weather, and that one lousy year is not an argument against a decade. So I'll make the same bets. Thanks for reading a losing season all the way to the bottom of the page — that's a rarer thing than a winning one.
New England lays twelve and a half on the road with six men out, four of them off the front seven — Milton Williams, Harold Landry III, Robert Spillane and Khyiris Tonga all gone — and the model comes back at 12.9 anyway, because the Jets are missing Will McDonald IV and Mason Taylor and because it does not read a roster the way you or I do. Four on the wind, nothing in it for me. Last coin flip of the season: four-tenths of a point, 50.5 percent, the least money I'll put down today. Seventeen weeks of these and not one of them ever told me a thing.
New Orleans closes its year without Alvin Kamara, without Cesar Ruiz blocking in front of where he'd have run, and without Bryan Bresee on the other side. Fourteen miles an hour in Nashville on the last Monday night of the season, on a total of 39.5 that already assumes nobody here can find the end zone. I'm below it at 38.4, 52.1 percent. I've printed Tennessee more often than any team in football this year and gotten almost nothing for it, and this is the last of them, so let the record show I went out betting against their offense one more time.
I took an under on a 34.5 in this same stadium back in October, so a 35.5 doesn't make me blink anymore. Pittsburgh arrives without T.J. Watt and two corners in James Pierre and Brandin Echols, Cleveland is again short David Njoku, and there's fourteen coming off the water on the Sunday before New Year's. My number is 34.5, a full point under, 52 percent. Seventh total I've bet on that lakefront this season — call it loyalty, call it a rut, the weather up there is the one thing all year that kept telling me the truth.
Jordan Love is out and Lamar Jackson is doubtful, so there is a genuine chance this one gets played by two men who opened the season holding clipboards. Ten miles an hour in Green Bay in the last week of December — right on the threshold, and the threshold is the entire rule I've been living by since Labor Day. Board says 38.5, I say 37.8, 51.7 percent. Seven-tenths is a sliver, but a small total with backups throwing into cold moving air is exactly where I want the last dollar of the year to go.
“Bet less than you brag, learn more than you lose, and never trust a tout who smiles too much.”
— The Betting Fool
Disclaimer: The Betting Fool is for entertainment purposes only. Nothing on this site is financial advice, and past performance does not guarantee future results. Must be 21+ to wager where legal. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER.